


On the Broad Loom of Slaughter

by clarityhiding



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Vikings, Crossdressing, Embedded Images, Heterochromatic Jason Todd, M/M, Sharing a Bed, Wordcount: 5.000-10.000, Wordcount: Under 10.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-19
Updated: 2018-08-19
Packaged: 2019-06-29 13:52:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15730716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clarityhiding/pseuds/clarityhiding
Summary: There's a devilish force moving across the land, destroying crops, slaughtering people. The Bat Clan plans to stop it, but first they need to fetch the weapon foreseen by their oracle. Something strong enough to stop the unstoppable.Unfortunately, the owner isn't so keen on letting it go.





	On the Broad Loom of Slaughter

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from Njal’s Saga (as quoted [here](https://northernwomen.org/project-norse-weaving/)). Many thanks to [chibi_nightowl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/chibi_nightowl/pseuds/chibi_nightowl) for beta-reading. Also, kudos to JayKore/TaneKore for the idea of heterochromatic Jason.
> 
> This is the second of my viking AUs. You'll have to wait until November for 1 and 3 (neither of which are set in the same universe as this one, so don't go hoping for sequels).

It's still dark out when Dick returns from his rendezvous with the captain of the city guard, though it won't remain so for much longer.

"Well? What did he say?" It makes more sense to wait until they rejoin the others back at the ship to find out, but Dick has been gone for more than two hours. Last Jason checked, it doesn't take nearly that long to catch a man up on the status of his daughter and grandson.

"That he wishes his men were as dedicated to their duties as we are. Come on, the sun will be up soon and we don't want to get caught by any early-rising fishermen."

"You're the one who took forever gossiping with the old man," Jason mutters, but he falls in behind his brother, running quickly and making short work of the distance between the city and the secluded beach where the longship is moored.

"We weren't just gossiping," Dick tells him as they scrabble up the side of the ship. "He had news of more attacks, these even further south than Gotham. Entire villages slaughtered, fields nearly ready for harvest instead set ablaze. Destruction for the sake of destruction alone, same as everywhere else."

Jason shudders. "We never should have left, not when they're getting so daring, ranging out so far. And there are the other attacks as well to watch for now. I don't suppose your esteemed father-in-law had anything to say about them?"

Dick grimaces and shakes his head, causing Jason's stomach to sink. The depravities of the Laughing Men are well known and suffered equally by all those unfortunate enough to fall in their path. The vicious slaughter of entire villages' worth of northern warriors is a more recent development, having only started two winters back. "Nay. He says they have heard the rumors of an angry dragon laying waste in the north, but he knows not if there is more truth to those tales than any of the other supposed causes. He knows of no lord seeking to make a name by marauding in the winter months."

"We should have remained at home," Jason says with a shudder. "Made certain our own people stayed safe and protected."

"Barbara said the portents were clear. If we ever want any hope of putting a stop to the Laughing Men, we had to go out this year."

"At least we can turn around now."

"One more stop," Dick reminds him. "I don't know about you, but I'm curious to see why she seemed to think we'd find a weapon strong enough to defeat the Laughing Men at the gates of Keep Aquista. It's never been rich enough to bother with before."

 

* * *

 

They make a big racket, coming up the road to Keep Aquista from the shore. It always feels like they should be charging across fields instead of being all nice and orderly, but it makes sense not to destroy crops when you don't even know if the people you're raiding can spare losing a little.

"This is stupid. Everyone's already going to be in the keep by the time we get there," Jason grumbles, trudging along next to Dick. He still doesn't see why Barbara said they should bother with this place, why anyone is even listening to her on this. Just because the spirits sometimes talk to her doesn't mean they have to do what she says.

Farmers and villagers alike flee from them as they enter the village, hiding behind the solid walls of the keep, its gates already swinging firmly closed as they come into view. Glancing around, it's clear to Jason that Fief Aquista isn't any better off than it was the last time they came this way, five, eight years ago. The buildings in the village are well-kept, but that's more a sign of careful frugality than excess. Their clan doesn't take from those who can't stand to lose a little, which is why they've never bothered with this particular settlement.

He's about to chide Dick into declaring the raid a failure when a flash of color catches his eye. A lone figure in brilliant scarlet dashes up to the entry of the keep from the far side, banging at the gates and shouting in the southern tongue for them to open up.

The gates stay firmly shut.

"Look at that," he says, elbowing Dick in the side and nodding to the display. As they get closer, the figure gains form, and Jason realizes it's a woman. Or rather, a lady, if he judges the cut, quality, and color of her dress correctly.

"They aren't going to let her in? She's clearly not a peasant."

"The cowards probably aren't willing to risk their own necks for a woman," Jason rumbles darkly. The way the people in these barbaric lands treat their girls and women is atrocious, acting as if they aren't the very foundation of society. 

"Well. Clearly they don't appreciate her properly," Dick says, a sly smile creeping onto his face.

"I was just thinking the same thing." He unshoulders his axe, picking up his pace so that he's loping forward, gathering speed for an attack. They had been planning to just shout a bunch and maybe set fire to a chicken coop, but if this scum are so low as to sacrifice women to save their own skins, they deserve a more permanent lesson.

As he reaches the gate, Jason swings the axe down at the woman—at her, not into her, since he just wants to give her and her people a fright, not actually cause any harm—when the lady spins at the last minute and suddenly his ears are ringing with the sound of metal hitting metal and the weapon in his hand reverberates. He falls back almost immediately, more than a little confused by the unexpected sound and sensation, when something stops him. His axe is caught, quite expertly hooked around the sword in the lady's trembling hands, the sword that had been hidden by her skirts up until this moment. From the look on her face, she is just as shocked as he by her ability to block his blow so handily.

Jason shakes off his surprise and slides his axe free, letting the lady fall back against the gate, sword thrust inexpertly in front of her as if it could truly stop him or any of the rest of his party. _"Cowards!"_ Jason shouts up at the dark windows of the keep, being careful to accent his words with the rolling tones of the north. _"Leaving your women to fight your battles for you!"_

"Jay," Dick murmurs to him, having finally caught up. "Look at her _sword_."

Much as he's always loathe to follow any instruction from Dick, Jason finds himself doing just that. It's a gorgeous weapon, gleaming and beautiful as it catches the sunlight. Not something you'd expect to see in the hands of a southern woman, let alone one who clearly has no idea how to wield it. "There's a weird look about the blade," he mutters to his brother. "Have you ever seen one that shone more blue than silver?"

"Seems to me that's the sort of blade that could cut down a hoard of unstoppable enemies when in the right hands." Dick grins, sharp and more than a little vicious. "I think we can manage a single untrained maid between the two of us, no matter how awesome her weapon."

Jason grunts in agreement, about to swing his axe upwards again when he thinks better of it. Instead, he shoves the handle back through its loop on his belt and draws his long knife instead. The knife is better for close-quarters and clumsy, inexperienced opponents who are just as likely to hurt themselves as their enemy. The woman is a victim in all of this, and he has no wish to do her harm.

He and Dick have fought side-by-side for years, and within short order they've succeeded in moving the fight away from the walls of the keep and any archers that may be lurking up above. Once they can work without worry of attack from above, it doesn't take them long to disarm the lady, Dick knocking the sword from her trembling grasp as Jason comes from behind, yanking surprisingly strong arms behind her back. "Oh, let her run off into the woods, we have what we came for," Dick says in their own tongue when he sees Jason hasn't let her go. "She can hardly fight back now."

In his arms, the lady—more a girl than a woman, really—struggles, twisting and turning, trying to get free. _"Heathens! Don't you dare take my father's sword, you barbarians, or I'll—I'll curse you to have all your hair fall out,"_ she snarls in her own language.

 _"And what will your father do to you for losing his sword?"_ Jason asks her, curious that she should have hold of such an obviously valuable weapon.

If anything, her look turns even darker. _"Nothing, for he's been dead these past three years, cut down by northern barbarians. His sword is all I have left, please don't take it."_

Jason can't help it, he laughs. "Well, there you have it. It wouldn't be right to separate her from such a keepsake," he tells Dick, and, having secured the girl's wrists with a leather thong from his belt, he slings her over his shoulder.

 _"Wait, what are you doing?!"_ she squeals, legs flailing uselessly in the air as he wraps an arm around muscled thighs.

_"Keeping you with your father's sword, girl. Don't worry, I'll let you settle a bit before I have you warm my bed. I prefer my concubines willing."_

"Bruce will skin you if you take her to bed against her will," Dick reminds needlessly him as they head back to the others, ready to return with their prize.

"Just because I say it to keep her quiet doesn't mean I'll do it, you know that."

"Still, I don't know what we're going to do with a pampered southern lady. She'll just complain the whole journey home, and then some more when we get there."

"If she's still complaining next spring, we'll send her to the captain in Gotham. City life seems to agree with most everyone these days," Jason says with a shrug, sheathing his knife and settling his burden for the walk back to the ship. 

The girl herself is relatively quiet all the way to the shore, Jason assumes because of his earlier warning. As they near the ship, though, she makes startled sound. _"Oh! Is that—"_ She struggles to push herself upwards with her bound hands to look at the ship as they approach it. _"Is that a dragon on your ship's prow? Certes, what a good omen!"_ She sounds excited and eager, laughing.

Jason glances over at the figurehead, a gorgeous thing Roy carved three winters back. It's ferocious and wonderful at the same time, teeth bared to scare off the bad, while widespread wings welcome in the hurt and lost. _"Don't be silly,"_ he tells her, _"dragons don't have wings. It's a bat."_

 

* * *

 

"Bruce is going to be so proud of you when we meet back up with him," Dick calls over to Jason while they row. The lady is bound hand and foot now, buried in the center of what they carried off from wealthier settlements visited prior to their brief detour to Fief Aquista.

"Fuck you, Dick. I wasn't gonna leave her with people who were willing to sacrifice her to save their own necks. Sure, we weren't a threat, but they didn't know that," Jason snaps at his brother. Somewhere behind him there's a snort, one that sound suspiciously familiar. Jason's head snaps around and he glares at Cass, sitting at her own oar a few benches back. "Something you wanna add?"

She doesn't say anything, but then Cass never says anything, at least not with her mouth. The people Bruce saved her from cut out her tongue when she was still too small to fight back, and she cannot speak with her hands when she is hard at work rowing. But she doesn't need her hands to convey what she says with her eyes, rolling them so hard they nearly come out of her head.

"What? You've both rescued people before, it's not like Bruce is the only one who ever does it. Hell, Ollie is nearly as bad as him, most of the time," Jason reminds them both, naming the head of one of the neighboring clans who frequently join theirs for summer raiding.

"Yeah, but it's your first rescue," Harper says, grinning at Jason. "I mean, Sasha doesn't really count, does she? Since she followed you back to the ship and hopped in when no one was looking. Now you're a _real_ Bat."

Jason shoots her a dark look. "I've always been a real Bat," he mutters grumpily. Before he puts his back into rowing, he spares their guest at the center of the ship a glance. Their eyes meet almost immediately, and he nearly flinches at the weirdly chilly quality of those pale-blue irises. Like she sees everything, but is somehow above it, beyond it. Separate from the world around her.

A shiver runs down his spine and he forces himself to look away. He's doesn't like pompous southern lords and ladies, hasn't since he was child. They judge quickly and harshly and think themselves somehow better, though they shit just like everyone else. Perhaps Dick was right; this wasn't exactly his best idea.

 

* * *

 

_"Hey. Hey, you. Warrior. I know you can hear me."_

Roy elbows him in the side. "Your girl wants something. Probably better for you to talk to her before she realizes we all understand what she's saying."

Grunting, Jason unfolds himself from his seat and goes to see what she wants. They're getting ready to switch to sail now anyway, so he may as well leave off rowing. _"What, girl?"_

She glares up at him from her little nest among furs and cloth and sacks of grain, squaring her shoulders. _"I'm bored. Untie me so I can do something useful. We're at sea, it's not like I can escape."_

Jason looks into those ice-blue eyes and considers this. _"We're not that far out,"_ he remarks as he makes a decision and settles down to undo the complicated knot keeping her hands bound behind her back. _"You could always risk swimming to shore. I wouldn't, though."_

 _"Why, because the sea monsters will eat me?"_ she sneers.

 _"Not all monsters come from the sea,"_ Jason cautions her, _"and there are worse fates in this world than being killed and eaten."_

 _"I know,"_ she says, smiling a queer smile that's more teeth than lips and causes something awful to crawl up Jason's spine. _"I've seen them."_

 _"There,"_ he says, finishing untying her wrists with slightly more zeal than strictly necessary in his eagerness to put some space between them, _"you're free. What will you do? Take up an oar?"_

She squeezes the reddened skin of her wrists, no doubt massaging life back into them, then reaches into the skirt of her kirtle, retrieving a spindle and wad of wool from a pocket that must be hidden there. _"When you are unfurling the sail? Why on earth would I do that?"_ Another smile, this one safe and playful, and then she sets the drop spindle spinning, feeding in the wool. _"No, I will keep myself entertained, thank you."_

"A talented woman you've found yourself, little brother," Dick murmurs in his ear, having snuck up behind him as he will insist on doing. "One who spins a smooth thread without lump or flaw."

"Hush," Jason says, jumping to his feet and backing away from the girl. "Don't speak about things you don't understand."

"Oh ho, I understand well enough," Dick says with a wink. "I haven't seen a woman turn your head like this since the princess last fought beside us."

"Because she's a brilliant warrior," Jason shoots back. "And this is different." Dick didn't grow up in and around a keep, he doesn't know how these pampered ladies are raised, doesn't realize that a lady with clothing as fine as this one would not normally spin the thread to weave it.

 

* * *

 

Aside from the spinning, the girl does not exhibit any other odd tendencies as they travel northward. Instead, she seems cheerful and eager to please, reminding Jason of the childlike wonder she exhibited when she saw the ship's figurehead. It's endearing and not dissimilar to the behaviors of his small nieces and nephew back home. She comes and sits beside him when he rows, spinning and asking questions, mostly about words. Much as he's loathe to give up the advantage of having a tongue to speak in with the others that she doesn't know, she'll need to learn their language if she's to become a part of their clan as so many have in the past.

He learns her name on the fourth day of travel, after she greets him one morning with a cheery, "Jason! Bread?" and thrusts out some of the last of the bread stolen back at Gotham.

 _"Listen to you. Who taught you that?"_ he asks, accepting the bread and biting off a chunk.

"Um. Fire… hair?" She grimaces and switches back to her own language. _"He didn't tell me his name, only yours."_

"Roy," he supplies once he's swallowed, because he's the only one of their current party who can be described that way.

She bobs her head, accepting this. _"I thought Jason was a Greek name?"_

 _"Maybe my mother was from there,"_ he says, which is safe enough. She may be joining their number, but nothing is certain, especially when they have yet to meet with the others.

 _"Oh."_ She hums and nods, toying with the end of her long black braid. _"I am called Caroline."_

_"Like the kings."_

_"Yes. My father wanted me named for his lord."_

_"And then he had you learn a task more suited for one below you?"_ Jason asks, nodding to her bulging pocket. In the days since she's taken up her spinning, the girl—Caroline—has added to her little wad with wool stolen on their raids, stating it would need to be spun eventually and she may as well be the one to do it.

_"Ah, no. That was all my mother. When it became clear she would not live to see her daughter grown, she taught me all she knew, that I might someday pass it on. It's an important art, spinning and weaving. All my mother's people did it."_

_"They do it no more?"_

_"I… cannot say. I never had the pleasure of meeting them while she lived,"_ she says softly. _"And then she died."_

He squirms awkwardly in his seat, swallowing down his mouthful of bread with great difficulty, his throat feels so dry. _"I am sorry."_

 _"Don't be. It is pain long passed."_ Caroline smiles. "Enjoy bread, Jason."

 

* * *

 

They rejoin the rest of the raiding party some seven days after leaving Fief Aquista. He feels an odd sort of trepidation at the reunion; Dick may be blind to the odd behaviors of the girl, but Jason knows the same can't be said of their father, who might take issue with such a captive.

"I'm glad for you," Bruce says one evening after they've pulled ashore to make camp and sleep on solid land for once. Small parties have been sent out to acquire supplies from surrounding farms. Most of the raiding undertaken by the Bat Clan happens like this—silently, under the cover of darkness, taking a little here, a little there. Not enough to be noticed or missed, and without any fuss or bloodshed.

"Come again?" Jason should be raiding with the others, but Bruce held him back, insisting he had a duty to look after his charge.

"The girl makes you happy," Bruce elaborates, nodding to where Caroline sits next to the fire. Her spinning sits in her lap, untouched as she pantomimes to Cass, the two of them laughing at her clumsy attempts at communication. "I haven't seen you smile like this since the Laughing Men, four years past."

Has he been smiling more? He hadn't thought to notice, so busy answering what he can of Caroline's questions and teaching her their tongue. She's picking it up quickly, though not without occasional, embarrassing mistakes, much to the amusement of both her and the rest of their band. "She's not like the ladies I knew when I was small," Jason admits, remembering the keep where he worked as an orphaned and much-abused kitchen boy, stealing scraps from the hunting hounds. Such was his life until the Bat Clan came in his seventh summer. While the men armed themselves and the women fluttered, he ran out to meet the raiders, preferring bloody death on their spears over a lifetime of servitude and spiteful glances, maligned for a defect of birth and no act of his own. "Hasn't once asked about… You know." He gestures to the white streak in his hair and his odd-colored eyes, the physical signs of his differentness.

Bruce sighs and the heavy hand on Jason's shoulder squeezes it reassuringly. "I know it wears at you, the burden of the _spá_. It is difficult, not having as clear a sense of it as the _völva_ when it comes to kenning the meaning of it."

"It's not _spá_ -craft," Jason insists as he always does when Bruce calls it that. "It's just having better sense than to try and get myself killed at the slightest provocation, unlike some I could name." He coughs a few times, supplying Dick's name as he does so.

His father laughs. "You keep telling yourself that, Jay, but we both know the truth of the matter. Anyway, I'm glad you found yourself someone. You're a bit too old to still be alone."

"She's not—" Jason sighs. "That's not why I took her. Her people left her out to save their own skins, and…" He trails off, unsure about mentioning the strange feeling he sometimes has around her. Bruce might believe him, might say it's _spá_ working through him to let him understand the _ørlög_ and not just put it down to a young man getting flustered over a pretty girl. But something tells him saying anything could also mean the end of this happy, carefree Caroline, that she'd disappear back into the detached lady she was when they first found her. "And she didn't deserve that," he finishes instead.

"No, you're right," Bruce says. He must read something in Jason's face, because his hand falls away and he abruptly leaves off his teasing. "No one does."

 

* * *

 

By the time they reach home, Caroline's learned enough of their language to hold entire conversations in it, only stumbling occasionally over this or that word she has yet to be taught. The thread she spins is fine and long, unbroken and perfect. A long life, a smooth fate, both things Jason isn't likely to see. Not with a confrontation with the Laughing Men that looms in their future now that they have their weapon.

He has yet to tell Bruce of his occasional unease concerning Caroline. As he grows to know her better, and sees the way she laughs at Roy's jokes and clumsily tries to copy Dick's movements when he practices with his spear, Jason tells himself it's just as Bruce said, a case of feeling out of sorts around a beautiful woman. There's nothing there, just a lady who wasn't appreciated where she was, wasn't given the support or the safety she needed and is blooming now that he has it.

They disembark and those left behind come to greet them, safe and whole and unscathed, despite all his fears to the contrary. Thank goodness for small mercies.

"Why scared?" Caroline asks as he picks her up and swings her over the rail and onto the solid ground beside him. "All good here."

"Surely you've heard of the Laughing Men even in the south. The raiders that kill and destroy not to gain wealth, but rather just for the pleasure of destruction," Jason says as he accepts bundles of bounty from those still aboard, passing them on to eager helpers.

"Laughing… Men?"

 _"Laughing Men,"_ he repeats in her own language so she'll understand the meaning of the words. "Because they laugh as they murder and spoil and burn, like it's all some great jest. They were normal men once, we think, but now they have sold their souls to a devilish _jötunn_ so as to become nigh-invincible."

Caroline shudders, pulling her mantel more closely around her solid shoulders. "Yes. I know Laughing Men." She swallows, the glances in the direction of Dick, who still wears her father's queer blade strapped to him. _"They slaughtered all of my family, my people, save one, leaving me orphaned and forced to depend on the kindness of others. Oh yes indeed, I know of your Laughing Men."_

Jason hesitates, wanting to pull her close, embrace her and offer some form of comfort for having to endure that kind of horror, but casual affection is difficult for him, being more Dick or Stephanie's domain than his own. "They do that," he says instead. "Leave one survivor, usually a woman or a child, so that there is someone to spread the tale of what they've done. They feed on fear, on the terror of what is to come, revelling in the fact that their victims are fully aware of their fate and can do little to stop it."

 _"They are wicked devils who must be wiped from the earth,"_ Caroline says, her voice full of vitriolic hate, her eyes flashing that cold ice-blue as she squares her jaw.

"It is the goal of the Bat Clan to do so, and why my brother and I sought your father's sword," Jason confides. "The Laughing Men have disrupted the balance of things, and now other evils roam land, awakened by their atrocities. A _draugr_ —a walking dead man—plagues the peoples around here in the winter months, killing warriors in their beds at night and disappearing come daylight."

 _"Yes,"_ she says, smiling an odd half-smile, _"we have heard of this. Though the people who took me in spoke of a dragon, vengeful and relentless, not a cursed dead man."_

"Ah, yes, we have heard that too, and also of a southern lord venturing out with all his men, hellbent on finding revenge for kinsmen slain. Many tales, and no notion of which is the right one." He shrugs. "It is my duty to collect the stories and retell them, so I do."

"You _skald_?" she asks, surprising him. He hadn't thought she knew that word, but one of the others could easily have taught it to her. Dick or Roy, determined to talk him up. Maybe even Bruce.

"Not yet, not until old Alfred dies, which hopefully won't be for a long while yet." The position of _skald_ is a noble one, the one tasked with it responsible for not just preserving the stories of the gods and goddesses so the chief may hear them when needed, but also teaching the youngsters of the clan, making certain they know the ways and traditions of their people. He's honored that Alfred chose him as his successor, but he's far from eager to take the old man's place.

 _"It is good to be a teacher. The world always needs more wisdom,"_ Caroline tells him, and then Stephanie is there, baby on her hip as she fusses over the newcomer, drawing her away with chatter about a bath and a meal, finding Caroline a job to do, a way to help.

A bundle of fur hits Jason in the face and he fumbles, barely catching it before it falls in the water. "Eyes on your work, lover boy," Roy teases him. "She's pretty, your girl, but don't think that excuses you from pulling your weight around here."

"She's not mine," Jason shoots back, passing the furs on to the eldest of his nieces to carry, a small and cheerful girl of eight. "She's just someone who needed help. That's what we do, we help people."

"She may not be yours now, but you better snatch her up soon if you want her. There are plenty here who wouldn't mind a wife or concubine so adept at spinning," his friend says with a leer.

It's all Jason can do not throw the bag of grain Roy just passed him right back in the other man's face. Caroline isn't his, but that doesn't make her some prize to be fought over, never mind if there hasn't been any new blood to their clan in some time now, they've been so concerned over the trouble of the Laughing Men. Still, best for Jason to set everyone straight before something regretful happens.

 

* * *

 

Apparently, Stephanie completely failed to explain how things work in the Bat Clan when she was busy showing their newcomer around and introducing her to everyone. At least, she didn't explain everything, since that evening after he's spread out his sleeping fur in the longhouse and pulled up his blanket, another body tries to crawl in with him, one that is shaped entirely wrong for a small niece in search of cuddles.

"What are you doing?" he hisses at Caroline, his cheeks hot with embarrassment.

"I you concubine," she tells him, her own cheeks a charming pink. "You say, me warm you bed."

Oh gods. "No, I didn't mean that," he tells her, flustered by past flippant words coming back to bite him now. "It was—no one has to do anything they don't want to do here."

Kneeling beside his bed, she frowns, clearly thinking. "I you _thrall_ , then?"

"Gods, no! Who even taught you that word? We don't do that here, the Clan of the Bat keeps no slaves, nor do our allies." It is one of the many things that sets them apart as odd amongst more distant neighbors, who sometimes view such practices as a sign of weakness. Never for long, though. "You're my friend. Nothing more, nothing less."

She seems to think about this for a bit, then finally nods. _"Then, as a friend, permit me to share your bed? The night air is chilly this far north, and I would not mind a warm body to sleep beside,"_ she says, switching back to her own language as she does when wants to be certain he understands her.

"…as friends," he agrees at last. "Nothing more."

"You boss, Jason," she says, crawling under his blanket and snuggling up to his chest. Tucked in as she is with his arm wrapped around her firm shoulders, her words are more than a little muffled when she next speaks, but that still doesn't keep him from understanding when she tells him, _"You can always change your mind later."_

 

* * *

 

He falls back into the habits of home, helping with the harvest, joking with his siblings and friends. He does not see Caroline much during the day, always spinning as she is with Barbara and Tam and the others who are skilled at such things. One day he comes back from the fields and she is seated at one of the large looms, carefully weaving the shuttle back and forth.

"She is a good spinner, your lady friend," Barbara tells him, rolling over in the clever wheeled chair Roy and Harper built for her. "We're all curious to see how well she weaves." Unlike her husband, Barbara is familiar with the nobility of the south, having rub elbows with them to an extent when she oversaw her father's house after her mother's passing; she knows Caroline's skill for the oddity it is.

"She told me threadcraft was the practice of her mother's people, that her mother taught her all she knew," Jason recalls. "I suppose she'll be just as good at this as at the spinning."

"I suppose," the _völga_ agrees, her eyes dancing with a mischief he has learned to dread. She _knows_ something.

"Jason!" Caroline calls out, waving him over. "Come, see! Thread done, now I weave."

He shoots Barbara one last suspicious look, then goes to admire Caroline's handiwork, exclaiming over the fineness of what she's already completed. "It's very good. You're quite talented."

"I not weave in long time. Now, I spin, I weave all time! Is nice." She smiles up at him, tucking an errant black curl behind her ear. "I make us new blanket. Winter nights cold."

Jason chokes and splutters; this is clearly the secret Barbara was so pleased about, if the laughter from behind him is anything to go by. Caroline has continued to crawl into his bed each night, though their sharing has remained completely chaste and innocent. Still, she has also firmly turned down those men that have approached her inquiringly, and has brushed off Harper and her flirtatious whispers as well.

"You don't have to," he says. "Weave your own blanket, for your own bed."

"Yes, I do that. For our bed."

He swallows down a whimper. Surely, this woman will be the death of him.

 

* * *

 

Caroline's cheeks are flushed pink with cold and exertion as she stumbles through the rigorous spearwork regime Damian has taken it upon himself to train her in. She's already used her girdle to hike up the skirts of her kirtle and chemise so they only hang to mid-calf instead of pooling on the ground, but apparently she continues to get her legs tangled up in all that extra fabric.

Finally, Damian throws his hands up in despair and stomps off into the warmth of the longhouse, grumbling to himself the entire time about useless southerners. Sitting on a stump next to the house, Jason chuckles to himself at the teen's frustration.

Next to him, Cass rolls her eyes; she doesn't have much patience for their youngest brother's airs of importance either. Her hands start to move, quick, delicate gestures meant to convey just what she thinks of Damian giving up so easily when she stops, the expression on her face going queer as her own cheeks turn pale.

Following her line of sight, he's surprised to see it aimed at Caroline, who hasn't stopped her practice despite her lack of teacher. Though, perhaps, that's not entirely correct. She's left off the jabs and thrusts that Damian was attempting to educate her on and is instead walking out a complicated pattern on the ground. It's almost a dance, the spear her partner, swooping and swinging, moving with her instead of perpendicular.

"That's different," Jason observes. He has to struggle to stay focused on her movements and not be distracted by the way her dress pulls tight across her small breast and strong shoulders, the tantalizing glimpses he catches of perfectly-shaped legs. There's something about those gestures, the way she holds and moves the spear that niggles at him, itches at his memory.

Cass's hands flash, and she has to repeat herself because he's half-distracted by the beauty of Caroline's motions, stumbling, yet at the same time graceful. "Something familiar about it? I don't know about that," he says, "though there's certainly something... different about it." His cheeks feel hot as he says this, which is silly, he's been out in the cold long enough that they should be numbed and cool.

A wicked grin forms on Cass's face, and she reaches out, catching the skirt of Caroline's kirtle in her hand when the other woman passes by on her way back inside.

"You want me?" Caroline's question is innocently curious, but that doesn't stop the tips of Jason's ears from burning from the unintended double-meaning of the words.

Cass's hands flutter, moving quickly in her eagerness to interrogate Caroline, but the lady simply shakes her head. "Too fast. Jason tell me?" She leans towards him, smiling that sweet smile that always makes his insides twist up in knots.

"Just. We were admiring your form, with the spear. You have studied with the staff?" Jason asks, ignoring the way Cass kicks him in the shin, trying to get to him to say more.

"Ah, small piece?" She holds up thumb and forefinger, barely half an inch of space between them. "Small small piece."

"You've only studied staff a little bit," Jason supplies, and she nods eagerly.

"Yes. My father, his... sword boss, spear boss?" She frowns, shaking her head in frustration. _"His armsmaster taught me and my sister a little about defending ourselves,"_ she finally says, switching to her own language when her vocabulary proves too limited.

He blinks, more than a little surprised. "You have a sister?" he asks somewhat stupidly, the first thing to come to mind though he's more curious about what sort of southern lord allows his armsmaster to teach his daughters arts of war.

"No," Caroline says, short and sudden, her face going blank as she tugs her skirts free, readjusts her girdle. "No more. Alone. Just me." She takes a step for the door, then hesitates, glancing back at them, a sad smile on her face. "Is good, sister. Jason lucky, have warrior sister. Best kind. Safe."

Then she is gone, leaving Jason to feel like the worst kind of idiot for having been so stupid as to remind her of the family that she lost.

 

* * *

 

Halfway into winter, when the days have turned bitter cold and snow is a fact of life once more, Bruce takes him aside while they are out hunting. "I am worried for you. You have had Caroline in your bed for more than three months now, and while she has yet to show sign of growing with child, it is only a matter of time. Will you wed her before your good luck ends? I know your thoughts on the issue of bastards."

Jason stumbles, nearly falling over a half-rotted log. "We only share a bed, nothing more. I have not even seen her knees, let alone her—her everything. We are friends, nothing more."

"You are both adults and of an age to be married. And I have seen how you look at each other—we have _all_ seen how you look at each other. I do not think she would deny you as she has every other man and Harper." He smiles, squeezing Jason's shoulder. "I will admit that I was not sure of her at first—nobles in the south are an odd lot, the whole of them—but I have grown fond of Caroline and would gladly welcome her into our family."

Cheeks hot, Jason shakes his head. "I do not think—it would not be right, to wed her only to leave her widowed. We go against the Laughing Men come winter's end; who knows if we shall return?"

"All the more reason to take your happiness now and perhaps leave her with something to remember you by, should you die honorably in battle." Bruce smiles at him. A sad, wistful smile, because he of all people knows what it is to lose a loved one to monsters, first his parents slain by the Laughing Men when he was a child, then his lover when the Bat Clan chanced upon the devils raiding an unfortunate village, some four years ago. They escaped, but Barbara will never walk again, Jason will always have a shock of white hair from the head wound he suffered, and Damian will never truly know his mother.

"Alright," he says with a sigh. "I will ask her."

 

* * *

 

"No."

"What do you mean, 'no'?" Jason stares at her, trying to comprehend. Bruce's words had buoyed him, letting him shake free the shackles of doubt until he felt certain his suit would be accepted. "You've made it clear you're willing to do more than just share my bed, why would you refuse to marry me?"

"I bed you, but I never any man's wife," Caroline says firmly.

"It wouldn't be like in the south, or even like in most of the other clans. You see how we are here—Barbara is Dick's equal, and not just because she is the _völga_."

 _"I know, and I do appreciate that, just as I'm honored by your asking, but I can never be your wife,"_ she repeats, this time in her own language.

"Can you at least tell me why?"

She studies him long and hard and with a sort of detachment Jason hasn't seen in months, not since the day of their return to the settlement. Then she sighs and the coldness seems to bleed from her gaze. _"My family is... cursed. Each generation, all die but one—men, women, children. It is why I never had a chance to meet my mother's people. Your family has been wonderful to me, as have you. I could not stand to have such a thing happen to you, to them, just for welcoming me in."_

It seems preposterous, unlikely and false, but. But Jason has seen the _völga_ 's portents come true, has experienced firsthand the destruction of the inhuman Laughing Men. He knows better than to scoff at talk of curses and the like. "So that is why you told all the others no."

"I tell them no because I not want them." She smiles up at him from where she sits at her half-finished weaving and, gently, she reaches out to stroke the back of his hand. "I say no because they not you."

Flushing, Jason jerks back his hand. "Ah, well. You have sworn to be no man's wife, and I have sworn to never be intimate with a woman I have not wed." After how his mother was treated by his father, cast out from his highborn bed and sturdy keep for daring to get with child despite her low breeding, how others treated him as something less just for being born a bastard, Jason promised himself he would never be so callous. Besides, if he does lie with her and she gets with child, her curse will one day mean her death, and he cares for her too much to ever be the cause of that.

"We are in real pickle, then," she says. "Want me sleep somewhere else tonight?"

Though he knows he should say yes, Jason grimaces and shakes his head. "No, we are… we are still friends. And the winter nights are long and cold."

"Yes," she says. "They are."

 

* * *

 

The month of _Góa_ is half-finished, winter nearly over, when there is smoke on the horizon and those out fishing come running back with reports of lurid green sails in the distance, coming quickly towards them.

"It is the Laughing Men," Dick says, and Jason's heart seizes in his chest.

"Where is the sword?" Bruce demands, striding over, his face storm-cloud black.

"Roy took it to sharpen, for when we leave next month. He stashed it somewhere, but he's out hunting today," Dick says, sounding more than little panicked.

"Well then, find it!"

"You know what it's like when Roy hides something! Only he can ever find it!"

Bruce growls, grabbing Dick's arm and dragging him towards the longhouse, no doubt to search for the missing blade. Jason turns to follow, but then Caroline is there, fierce and determined, wearing the blanket from their bed around her shoulders like a cape. "I will take care of this."

Jason can't help himself, he laughs, high and hysterical. "You're a lady, you can barely handle a spear without tripping over your skirts. There is no way you can help with this."

She sighs and reaches up to touch his cheek with the very tips of her fingers. "It is sad that you deny your talents with the _spá_ -craft. With one eye green as the sea and and the other blue as the sky, you would surely master it quickly and see all things clearly, if you only let yourself," she says, showing a command of his tongue that he never even suspected before.

"What—? How…?"

"You are a truly good person, Jason, and one I have enjoyed knowing more than any other in my life. I think I could have loved you, had my fate ever truly been my own." She curls her fingers around the back of his neck and pulls him down, pressing a gentle kiss to his lips. "Thank you. For everything."

"You can't," he whispers, trying to catch her, pull her close, keep her with him as long as possible. "It's suicide for you to go alone."

He tries to grab her, but she's already out of reach, several feet away, somehow quick as lightning when she was always a little clumsy in the past. "Give me three days. Three days, Jason, and I will do all that I can to save you and yours." And then she is running, her skirts hiked up as she sprints away, faster than he's ever seen her or any person go before, feet falling so lightly they hardly seem to touch the snow.

In that moment, caught between the sky and the sea, he sees it, feels it rock his entire core such that he falls to his knees.

"Jason? Are you alright?" Bruce demands, the sword of Caroline's father grasped in his hand as he runs up, Dick on his heels. So they found it, then. "Who is that, running towards the ships?" 

"The _völga_ said to go to Keep Aquista and take what we found at the gates," Jason says.

"Yes, and you did. You and Dick found the sword and brought it back to us," Bruce says, dividing his attention between his son and the small figure on the horizon, cream and scarlet in color as it reaches the shore and begins wading out to meet the green-sailed ships.

Jason shakes his head. "Don't you understand? We didn't find the sword at the gates, not truly." He can barely see through the tears in his eyes, but he finds he doesn't really need them to ken that the ships of the Laughing Men have turned, are already leaving.

"Oh gods," Dick says in a whisper, horror creeping into his voice as understanding dawns. "What we found at the gates—Bruce, it was _Caroline_."

 

* * *

 

The next three days are the longest and the worst of Jason's life. He would have immediately taken the blue-bladed sword and followed after the Laughing Men with no mind to his safety or life had Bruce and Dick not held him back.

"She's just a girl," Jason pleads. "She isn't a weapon or a warrior, just a girl." A girl with eyes as blue and as cold as ice, with a smile so sharp and cutting it is nearly a sword, who spins thread so fine and weaves cloth so smooth that nary a flaw can be found. Even he knows that she is more than just a girl, but he loves her.

"She begged three days of you," Barbara tells him when goes to her seeking answers.

"She has nothing to fight with, no weapons, no armor. Not even a shield. What can she do?"

"She turned the ships away," the _völga_ reminds him. "No one's sent the Laughing Men away once they have prey in their sights before. And she is not completely without protection; she has the blanket she wove for you. I suspect there are many spells of safety hidden within its weft."

A piece of cloth is no protection at all against hordes of bloodthirsty madmen, no matter what the _völga_ claims. "You saw that she would conquer them, that she alone could end the Laughing Men. How will she do it?" Jason demands. "How?"

"I do not know," Barbara admits. "The _ørlög_ only showed me that you would find what you sought at the gates of the keep. I truly believed it to be the sword until you and Dick realized your mistake."

"What is she? She spoke our tongue to me like one who's known it all her days," Jason whispers. "She talked of dragons as if they were wonderful creatures, as if…" He sucks in his breath, shocked.

"What? What is it?"

"Caroline thought the prow of our ship a dragon, because dragons in the south are great winged lizards instead of limbless serpents, and she was excited by it, calling it a good omen."

Barbara frowns. "I know Bruce saved you when you were just a child, but those in the south do not view dragons as signs of good fortune, Jason."

"And she repeated the story your father told Dick, of a dragon full of vengeance being responsible for the deaths of all those warriors the past two winters. She smiled when she spoke of it." A dreadful smile, less human, more animal.

"What are you thinking, Jason?" Bruce asks, coming out of the shadows to sit with them beside the fire. "What _ørlög_ have your odd eyes seen?"

"She is not the daughter of the lord of Aquista, she said they were merely those who took her in after the Laughing Men killed all her kin. But the people of Acquista did nothing when we stole her, never said a word. If anything, they acted like they didn't even know she was there." Jason swallows, staring into the flames and trying to see the way of things, the twistings and the turnings. "I do not know," he says at last. "I have all the pieces, I think, but I lack the ability to ken their meaning." Surely what he sees in the fire cannot be true.

Caroline may be more than just a girl… but surely, there is no way she could be a dragon.

 

* * *

 

On the third day, Jason is up before the sun, strapping the blue-bladed sword to his back and his helm to his head. When he leaves the longhouse, Bruce is waiting for him in the pre-dawn light.

"You cannot stop me," he tells his father. "She faced our enemies while we ran about like witless fools and I… I…" He swallows, unable to speak the true words of his heart, but he can see from Bruce's face that the man understands. "She would not be my wife, but I consider myself her husband, in as much as she ever allowed me to be. It is my duty to see her home safely."

"I know." Strong arms wrap around him, pulling him into an embrace that makes him feel like nothing so much as a child once more, small and scared and desperate for just a single kind word in his life. "I am sorry, but it would seem that you have inherited my bloodline's propensity for falling in love with difficult women."

"If she is dead, I don't know that I will return," Jason admits, his voice barely a whisper as he presses his face into his father's shoulder.

"Ah, well. Alfred will be sad to lose such a promising successor, but I am sure he will understand."

He pulls in a deep, shuddering breath, then lets the other man go. "Farewell, Father."

"Safe journey, my son. May you find all that you seek, and return to me happier and wiser."

Jason turns and leaves quickly, before his tears can start flowing again or any of the rest of the clan discover his absence. If he stays for more goodbyes, he may never leave.

And without Caroline, he cannot stay.

 

* * *

 

He takes a small boat, light and quick, and heads north in the direction the Laughing Men came from. Once he's at sea, he gives himself to the _spá_ -craft and lets the _ørlög_ guide his hand in the steering. The gift he has denied has always been stronger at sea, where there is nothing but the sea for his green eye and the sky for his blue and no land in sight.

The boat bumps against land about an hour past midday, which is both gratifying and terrifying. Gratifying that he will not be wasting precious time on travel, terrifying that the Laughing Men have been so close all this time.

Pulling the boat onto shore and hiding it in some bushes, away from the green-sailed ships, he scours the beach until he locates a path that seems to go in the direction of a plume of smoke rising in the distance. Drawing the sword from its sheath, he's just about to start up the path when he notices a figure coming towards him. Lonely and slight and scarlet.

"I should have told you four days, not three. I'm sorry," Caroline says when she gets close. At first he thinks she has gained a new red cape to replace the blanket she wove for them, but then he sees that no, it is the same smooth cloth. The red of the blanket matches the red of the dress matches the red painting a trail behind Caroline on the path.

Alive and whole and soaked to the skin in the blood of their enemies, she has never been more beautiful to him. Like a Valkyrie, standing alone and unvanquished in the aftermath of a great battle.

Bloodstained fingers rub at her cheeks, smearing even more red there instead of wiping it away. "I'm sorry," she says again, sounding dazed and exhausted. "I never wanted you to see me like this."

Dropping the sword, Jason dives forward and just barely manages to catch her before she hits the ground. "Are you hurt?" he demands, searching her kirtle for any sign of a cut, a piercing, a wound.

"Nay, only drained. It takes a lot, to use that much _seiðr_ -craft on so many people." She smiles vaguely at him, shaky wet fingers touching his cheek. "Despite the stories, I only ever took the lives of those warriors that acted dishonorably."

"You are the one that has been killing in the winter months," Jason guesses. "Seeking vengeance for your slain kin."

"I did not know their fate to be the work of the Laughing Men. The woman they left to tell the tale, my father's wife—the horror was too much, and she lost her mind, retreating into herself. She could not tell me which clan was responsible, so I had to find that out on my own. I went to noble families, asked that they let me stay and then, when the raiders attacked, I made sure to be outside so they could capture me."

"You would have killed us all in our beds, had the Laughing Men not come."

"Never, all the warriors of the Bat Clan are honorable. They would never force themselves on a woman after she refused them."

"And had I taken you up on your offer?"

"I would have happily joined with you, and you would have known why I could never be your wife." She takes his hand and puts in on her chest where, much to his surprise, there is no sign of anything but hard muscle under the fabric. The small bosom he has refused to take notice of for months has disappeared.

Jason's head jerks up in shock. "You are—"

"A man?" Caroline laughs. "Everyone underestimates a woman, and a false breast is an excellent place to hide various lethal herbs and a very sharp dagger. I was at school when the Laughing Men came and destroyed my home, otherwise they would have been stopped much sooner. I'm sorry for that, too."

"So it was the third story that was true, then. That of a southern lord out for blood," Jason says faintly, trying to wrap his head around the fact that Caroline is not in the least the dainty lady he thought her to be.

"All three of the rumors are true, to an extent. I am a southern lord, as with my father dead, I am now lord of the ruined Fief Drake. And I cannot deny that I have, upon occasion, found a certain justice in using _hamhleypa_ to take on the shape of the dragon from my family's coat of arms in order to avenge their deaths." Her— _his_ —blue eyes twinkle playfully, no longer ice cold.

"And the rumor of a _draugr_? You are hardly dead." Though he looks it, with all this blood.

"Ah, well. You are something of the walking dead, when the gods have charged your family to destroy a thing so evil that it seems invincible."

"I thought you said you were cursed?"

"Charged, cursed—a geas becomes a curse when you run from it, as my mother learned. They were a small clan, all of the womenfolk skilled in _spá_ , _seiðr_ , _galdr_ , or runes. When she knew she would not live to instruct my sister to carry out the geas, my mother taught me all she knew."

"You always knew our language. She taught you that, too."

The man in his arms sighs, leaning into Jason's chest. "I am sorry I lied to you. I had to get close to the Laughing Men in order to fulfil my fate, and would your father have trusted a southern lordling with a Christian name to truly have the kenning to end such a threat?"

"A Christian name… Your name is clearly not Caroline. Is it not Karl either, then?"

"I told you, my father would have me named for his lord, so he named me Tim, short for Timotheus. It means 'honored by God.' How was he to know it was not a god I would ever seek to follow?" 

"Ah, well. Your mother did not hold your name against you, so I will not either," Jason murmurs. He tips up Tim's face, stares into his eyes. "Your fate is your own, now. Do you still feel you could love me?"

"It is no wonder you denied the _spá_ for so long if you think any man is truly master of his own fate," Tim says, smiling. "Fortunately, it would seem the Norns would have me love you no matter what. Though I still won't be your wife."

"Ah, well," Jason says as he leans in, his lips brushing against that tantalizing smile. "Marriage is overrated anyway."

**Author's Note:**

> Most of all of the terms used in this can be found [on this page](http://www.vikinganswerlady.com/seidhr.shtml). In case you were curious about the distinctions.
> 
> [I have a tumblr!](http://themandylion.tumblr.com/) Come visit if you want ridiculous AU headcanons, rants about the English language (and/or educational publishing), plague fangirling, adorable baby bats, and veeeeery occasional fanart.


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